Well done, Chris - great analysis, simply stated, easy to follow, and, hopefully, makes common sense.
To that last point: having worked in the industry for over four decades as an engineer & MBA, doing everything from solving nuclear construction issues, taking R&D projects through commercialization, leading technical due diligence teams for project finance, and independently advising utility Boards on the exection status of multi-billion-dollar projects, I've lost the ability to see what makes "common sense".
You appear to have not lost that ability. In other words, this makes so much sense, I look forward to to the inane reasons and Twisted Physics* (not only weird science**, but a great band from the early '80s) people such as Prof. Jacobson will use with pretzel logic*** in trying to keep their zits intact.
* "Twisted Physics" was not a band in the early '80s as far as I know - I just made that up
** "Weird Science" is a real film from 1985 starring a young Anthony Michael Hall
*** "Pretzel Logic," is also real, a great (IMHO) Steely Dan album & song from 1974
You might want to consider the effect of diminishing returns when evaluating renewable energy capacity.
As nameplate capacity for wind and solar increases, each incremental addition produces progressively less net generation. This means future output cannot simply be calculated by scaling today’s generation with a multiplier.
Beyond state of charge, another key limitation is inverter sizing and capability, which governs the rate of charge and discharge in energy storage systems.
Similarly, storage will also have a maximum absorption rate limit.
As wind and solar capacity grows and surplus energy surges, storage systems—constrained by their inverters—may struggle to absorb all the excess power.
Similarly, when wind and solar generation drops suddenly, as often happens, inverter limitations can hinder storage from ramping up discharge to meet grid demand.
Consequently, even with substantial wind, solar, and storage capacity, reliance on hydrocarbons or other dispatchable energy sources persists to ensure grid stability.
Inverter limitations are extremely unlikely to be an issue. To meet average demand you need about 4 X nominal capacity. If you size the system to have 1.5 X average capacity. i.e. an annual reserve margin of 50% like the thermal grid has, that will mean the combined wind and solar capacity will be 6 X average demand. i.e. inverter capacity will be way above demand.
Similarly on the storage side, if you want to keep spillage/ curtailment below 15% you will need to have storage capacity around 50% of nominal wind and solar capacity or 3 X average demand or 1.5 X peak demand.
An example of this is the new 24/7 solar/battery plant being built in the Emirates. To supply a constant 1 GW 24/7/365 it has 5.4 GW of solar i.e. 5+GW of inverters and 19 GWh of batteries. the inverter capacity is more than 5 times demand
And again yet another ridiculous strawman argument:
Is hydro not turned down when wind and solar are strong so it can run harder when they are low
Does wind not blow at night?
Is excess generation capacity not a thing? In 2010 when wind and solar were less than 3% of supply the US had over 800 GW of FF capacity to supply 2,880 TWh and a peak after hydro and nuclear had done their thing of a little over 450 GW. Was curtailment of almost half the capacity at peak load and 60% at average load not a national scandal?
So what if California has enough wind and solar to generate 50-70% more than its annual demand at normal capacity factors. It has always had enough generation and import capacity to do that so what is different?
I'm filling in at least some of the parts that Prof MZJ leaves out.
Like I said a the end of my post:
"Why I am ‘picking at Prof. Jacobson’s zits’
Because his propaganda posts don’t add anything to the debate around the difficult parts of ‘decarbonisation’. The phase where an x% increase in the *capacity* of ‘renewables’ leads to quite a lot less than x% increase in usable ‘renewable’ power because an increasing fraction of x% has to be curtailed.
That annoys me."
Oh, and of course there are times when CA Wind doesn't blow at night, just look at the data.
Yes wind does drop to almost zero sometimes at night so you need a combination of hydro, biomass, V2G, geothermal and a few batteries to meet demand and even some retained gas a few hours at a time or a few hundred hours per year. However as hydro during the day and on windy nights will be much reduced and many "offpeak" night-time loads such as municipal water transfer, irrigation, hot water heating will mostly be moved to daytime, so peak nightime loads will be 10-20% lower.
For crying out loud, the more you put of any capital resource into a market the lower the utilisation of the marginal operator. It applies to horses, ploughs, ox carts, ships aeroplanes and trucks. It is economics 101 or basic optimisation maths, or common sense for a 12 year old. That is why some gas plants operate at 3-5% annual capacity but people still build new ones.
Who bloody cares if a battery that can supply 1 GW/4 GWh only runs at 5% annual capacity if it has half the lifetime cost of a 1 GW gas plant that is operating at 5% capacity. Why would you buy the gas plant. It doesn't offer anywhere near the FCAS capacity, it is noisy and dirty and expensive to run
Mark Jacobsen is probably not eexactly right, but your critique is so misleading it makes his mistakes pale into insignificance.
Professor Jacobson inspires quite the following on Substack. Nice work Chris--thank you!
Well done, Chris - great analysis, simply stated, easy to follow, and, hopefully, makes common sense.
To that last point: having worked in the industry for over four decades as an engineer & MBA, doing everything from solving nuclear construction issues, taking R&D projects through commercialization, leading technical due diligence teams for project finance, and independently advising utility Boards on the exection status of multi-billion-dollar projects, I've lost the ability to see what makes "common sense".
You appear to have not lost that ability. In other words, this makes so much sense, I look forward to to the inane reasons and Twisted Physics* (not only weird science**, but a great band from the early '80s) people such as Prof. Jacobson will use with pretzel logic*** in trying to keep their zits intact.
* "Twisted Physics" was not a band in the early '80s as far as I know - I just made that up
** "Weird Science" is a real film from 1985 starring a young Anthony Michael Hall
*** "Pretzel Logic," is also real, a great (IMHO) Steely Dan album & song from 1974
I love it when someone with a brain rips up the script!
Just like to offer some feedback:
You might want to consider the effect of diminishing returns when evaluating renewable energy capacity.
As nameplate capacity for wind and solar increases, each incremental addition produces progressively less net generation. This means future output cannot simply be calculated by scaling today’s generation with a multiplier.
For more insight, see: https://wrjohn1.substack.com/p/wind-solar-and-the-effect-of-diminishing
Beyond state of charge, another key limitation is inverter sizing and capability, which governs the rate of charge and discharge in energy storage systems.
Similarly, storage will also have a maximum absorption rate limit.
As wind and solar capacity grows and surplus energy surges, storage systems—constrained by their inverters—may struggle to absorb all the excess power.
Similarly, when wind and solar generation drops suddenly, as often happens, inverter limitations can hinder storage from ramping up discharge to meet grid demand.
Consequently, even with substantial wind, solar, and storage capacity, reliance on hydrocarbons or other dispatchable energy sources persists to ensure grid stability.
For more insight see: https://wrjohn1.substack.com/p/grid-based-energy-storage-explained
Inverter limitations are extremely unlikely to be an issue. To meet average demand you need about 4 X nominal capacity. If you size the system to have 1.5 X average capacity. i.e. an annual reserve margin of 50% like the thermal grid has, that will mean the combined wind and solar capacity will be 6 X average demand. i.e. inverter capacity will be way above demand.
Similarly on the storage side, if you want to keep spillage/ curtailment below 15% you will need to have storage capacity around 50% of nominal wind and solar capacity or 3 X average demand or 1.5 X peak demand.
An example of this is the new 24/7 solar/battery plant being built in the Emirates. To supply a constant 1 GW 24/7/365 it has 5.4 GW of solar i.e. 5+GW of inverters and 19 GWh of batteries. the inverter capacity is more than 5 times demand
Need some clarification....
1) With your scenario above, do you still require some Nat Gas? -or- will that be eliminated?
2) Would you expand import capacity?
3) When you talk about "3 x Demand" for sizing storage, are you talking about Energy Storage Capacity (GWh) or Power (inverter sizing GW)?
Your example of the UAE Project really does not apply. It does not have a variable demand. Rather, it has a Target Baseload of 1 GW.
What is interesting, is that although some might think that a hybrid (solar + storage) facility would put out a constant rate, that is not the case.
You can see the facility model here: https://www.goinggreencanada.ca/UAE_1.png
Note that the facility is unable to output a constant or reliable baseload of 1 GW. However, it does average > 1 GW over the year.
And again yet another ridiculous strawman argument:
Is hydro not turned down when wind and solar are strong so it can run harder when they are low
Does wind not blow at night?
Is excess generation capacity not a thing? In 2010 when wind and solar were less than 3% of supply the US had over 800 GW of FF capacity to supply 2,880 TWh and a peak after hydro and nuclear had done their thing of a little over 450 GW. Was curtailment of almost half the capacity at peak load and 60% at average load not a national scandal?
So what if California has enough wind and solar to generate 50-70% more than its annual demand at normal capacity factors. It has always had enough generation and import capacity to do that so what is different?
How is it "straw man", Peter?
I'm filling in at least some of the parts that Prof MZJ leaves out.
Like I said a the end of my post:
"Why I am ‘picking at Prof. Jacobson’s zits’
Because his propaganda posts don’t add anything to the debate around the difficult parts of ‘decarbonisation’. The phase where an x% increase in the *capacity* of ‘renewables’ leads to quite a lot less than x% increase in usable ‘renewable’ power because an increasing fraction of x% has to be curtailed.
That annoys me."
Oh, and of course there are times when CA Wind doesn't blow at night, just look at the data.
Yes wind does drop to almost zero sometimes at night so you need a combination of hydro, biomass, V2G, geothermal and a few batteries to meet demand and even some retained gas a few hours at a time or a few hundred hours per year. However as hydro during the day and on windy nights will be much reduced and many "offpeak" night-time loads such as municipal water transfer, irrigation, hot water heating will mostly be moved to daytime, so peak nightime loads will be 10-20% lower.
For crying out loud, the more you put of any capital resource into a market the lower the utilisation of the marginal operator. It applies to horses, ploughs, ox carts, ships aeroplanes and trucks. It is economics 101 or basic optimisation maths, or common sense for a 12 year old. That is why some gas plants operate at 3-5% annual capacity but people still build new ones.
Who bloody cares if a battery that can supply 1 GW/4 GWh only runs at 5% annual capacity if it has half the lifetime cost of a 1 GW gas plant that is operating at 5% capacity. Why would you buy the gas plant. It doesn't offer anywhere near the FCAS capacity, it is noisy and dirty and expensive to run
Mark Jacobsen is probably not eexactly right, but your critique is so misleading it makes his mistakes pale into insignificance.
I do however congratulate you for not blocking me